Retailers must join battle against toxic products

“You get what you pay for” usually applies to product quality — not that you’re paying discount prices to be poisoned.

When we released a report on toxics found in dollar store products, we did so intending to highlight loopholes in toxics regulations that, among other glaring issues, allow for hidden lead in children’s products. We point out that these gaps must be filled this fall when the House looks at Bill S-5, which makes changes to Canada’s cornerstone environmental law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA.

What ended up happening was that Dollarama and Dollar Tree’s stock prices dropped, and MarketWatch attributed that drop to us. While that attribution implies a level of control over the broader market drop that occurred over the period following our report, the point is taken — analysts are seeking insight into the companies in their clients’ portfolios, and this is a data point that can influence their decisions. However, rather than resisting the findings of this report, we need retailers to join us in the fight for stronger toxics laws.

Retailers pass the buck to regulators when they justify these unacceptable lead levels in products, and regulators do the same when they don’t create strong, comprehensive laws that protect our health and the environment.

The disproportionate health harms that fall on low-income and racialized communities, along with irreversible environmental contamination, cannot be allowed to continue with toxic products — particularly for those marketed to children and bought by parents, teachers and daycares with the assumption that they are safe.

If we are going to see some accountability in the world of toxics in products, we need retailers to step up. Product testing, supply chain transparency and management, and rejecting hazardous products from their shelves are all places they can start. But we also need governments to take these types of exposures and impacts more seriously and create stronger laws and regulations that prevent us from being poisoned by toxic products. Your elected officials need to hear from you if you want CEPA to be strengthened.

To reduce product-based pollution and protect community health, CEPA must improve transparency and disclosure through mandatory labelling of hazardous ingredients in products. It needs better regulatory enforcement and stronger product testing and safety requirements for importers and retailers.

It must address the disproportionate exposures and impacts of toxic chemicals on racialized and low-income communities, and improve collection of biomonitoring data to better understand and address the exposures experienced by vulnerable populations. It needs to prohibit classes of highly hazardous substances to avoid substitution of a new, closely related chemical within the class, and set clear timelines for assessing substances and implementing measures to address substances determined to be toxic; integration of “safer substitution” as a tool in chemicals management.

Retailers know that their reputation and customer loyalty depend on providing safe products for all ages. Governments know that getting reelected depends on ensuring communities and ecosystems are no longer dumping grounds for heavy metals and other hazards. The buck needs to stop somewhere, and retailers can’t be the only ones to bear the brunt of the public’s ire on this issue.